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Lessons from Blake

So I have been pretty chicken **** about tackling certain areas of my life lately, areas like oh, I don’t know, how I avoid dating and putting myself out there, how I am still struggling to figure out my voice as an artist, and how I need to figure out what I REALLY believe about God and Christ and the whole thing, you know. Little stuff. Anyway, I was aware of these issues, but making excuses. And really what it comes down to is a big bunch of useless fear. Fear that I will see myself become someone I hate, fear that I will be so bad at loving someone that I will see another man cry and break my own heart all over again, fear that I will not be understood or successful, fear that I will have to accept things that hurt or challenge or don’t make sense.

But then I’m doing my homework tonight and we are reading William Blake’s “Book of Thel”

this is what the editors of Norton’s Anothology of Romantic Lit says about the theme of Blake’s book.

“…the elemental failure of nerve to meet the challenge of life as it is, the timid incapacity to risk the conflict, physicality, pain, and loss without which there is no possibility either of growth or creativity.”

If that is not Fate’s slap in the face, saying “snap out of it!” than I don’t know what it is.